Tip #5
Minimum Business
Increment

This Agile Leadership Tip focuses on a concept from Al Shalloway, who once was the largest Scaled Agile consulting company in North America. This concept of the Minimal Business Increment is an application of the Agile Manifesto’s principle shown to the right.

The MBI applies well to Agile Project Management in that each MBI can be considered a mini project. 

An MBI is the smallest piece of functionality that can be delivered that has value to your business. Here are some facets of an MBI.

• Adds value for your customers (internal or external)
• Provides valuable feedback that the right functionality is being built
• Provides valuable feedback that the functionality is being built in the right way
• Provides functionality that can be delivered and be validated as being useful
• Enhances your organization’s ability to deliver value in the future
• It contains all of the pieces that are required for value realization, including any work required by documentation, operations, and marketing.
• MBIs are created by first determining who your target audience is and then deciding on the scenarios for this market for the business objective. Remember, these are minimum business increments.

The value realized may be for the business, not the customer.

The MBI document is used to clarify what work needs to be done. An MBI ties all the work we do back to our strategic objectives.

Lesson #6 shows the full MBI Template and how to use it.

Here is a link to all 52 Free Agile Leadership Course Snippets.